The Secret of Everything

by O'Neal, Barbara

  “You seem to have taken in a stray.”

  “Do you know Felix?”

  “As well as I know any of them. He seems a good pup.” The priest tugged weeds. “Would you like to help? Weeding is good for a heavy heart.”

  “Really.”

  He grinned. “And there are a lot of weeds.”

  “Okay.” Tessa knelt on the ground and started helping. The ground was soft and the weeds came out easily. She pulled them silently, but this action sent her thoughts flying inward, into analysis. “Hmmph,” she said aloud.

  “You do have a heavy heart,” he said. “Priests are known to be good listeners.”

  Tessa rocked back on her heels. “I do,” she said, and to her horror, the tears she’d been fighting rose in her eyes. “I don’t know who I am. I mean, I do know—I’m not one of those people who has big issues, you know? I’m not speaking metaphorically. I know who I am.”

  He nodded. “Keep weeding.”

  She obeyed, talking as she yanked out bindweed and goat-heads. “The one thing I’ve always been sure of is my father. He loves me. He’s always done the right thing, and I am who I am—who is this grounded, clear-sighted person!” She pulled out a big hunk of soil, and dirt went flying into the air. “Sorry.”

  His eyes twinkled. “It’s all right.”

  “But now I find out he’s not my father. He lied to me all my life, and things are changing right under my feet, and the things I thought I understood are not true, and I wish I could get it all sorted out, so I could get on with my life and stop being stuck here in this place.” Dirt got under her cast, and she turned her hand upside down to shake it out. She sank back on her heels again. “And that’s the other thing.”

  He seemed to sense the shift in her and sat up, his hands on his thighs. “Yes?”

  “How do you make something right when you’ve done something wrong? I mean, something that led to somebody else dying? Not on purpose, not murder or anything.” She chewed her inner lip for a second, struggling to stay in control. “Negligence. No,” she said, shaking her head. “Hubris. My sin is hubris.”

  He smiled gently. “Not very many people even claim that as a sin in today’s world. Your father has raised you well.”

  Tessa nodded, bowing her head. Tears streamed out of her eyes, and she couldn’t stop them. It felt good to let it go, felt right to water the earth with tears in the company of a priest.

  “That’s quite a lot,” he said.

  She nodded. Felix came up beside her and leaned his butt on her hip.

  “There is no way to make up for the loss of a life,” the priest said. “But the living need to move forward. They need to make reparation.”

  “What a great word. Make amends, right?”

  He nodded, gestured toward the mountain behind her. “That’s why people undertake pilgrimages and do good deeds and say the rosary a hundred times.”

  A possibility of stillness moved through her. She nodded. “Thank you.”

  He smiled. “Anytime.” He whistled, and Felix leapt up happily. The priest took a dog biscuit out of his pocket and held it out. Felix politely accepted it, and Father Timothy rubbed his ears. “Take good care of her, young man,” he said. Felix gave the priest a delicate, thankful kiss on the chin.

  When she got back to the plaza, Tessa’s cell phone beeped with messages that had come in while she was out of range. “Hi, Tessa. It’s your dad. Give me a call when you get this.”

  She hung up and didn’t call him. Every time she thought of more, she felt breathless. She and Felix circled back around the little church and down the road that looped in a circle around the town, turned in to one of the lanes branching out from the plaza, and there, at the end, perched at the edge of a stand of aspens, was a cute little house with a FOR RENT sign on the gate. The wooden window frames were painted turquoise.

  Tessa loped up to it and peered over the waist-high wall. A small courtyard planted with roses, pink and white cosmos and tidy stands of marigolds fronted a cottage with a deep porch and a big front window. A block of quiet houses stretched up the hill on either side, and through a break in the trees, she could just spy the river.

  It was obviously empty. Tessa tried the gate and found it open. She let herself and Felix into the courtyard, which was as still as a June morning—bees humming, cicadas singing, the roof shading the porch. It faced east, to capture the morning.

  She looked in the windows. A very small kitchen, a bedroom, a living room. Not much more than that. She dialed the number on the sign.

  “Hi,” she said when an older-sounding woman with hints of a New Mexico accent answered. “I’m interested in the house you have for rent. I’m looking in the courtyard now. Can someone show it to me?”

  Within the hour, she had rented it, month to month. Two hours after that, she’d found a bed and a table, a chair and a couch and a desk at the local VFW outlet, and checked out of the hotel. It was only as she sat in the courtyard in the gathering dusk, drinking a beer and eating a sandwich she’d bought at the local subway shop, that she realized she was absolutely, dead-on furious with her father.

  The next time her phone rang, she picked it up. “Don’t call me, Dad,” she said. “I have to think. When I’m over it, I’ll talk to you.”

  “There’s more you should know.”

  “Not today there isn’t.”

  “Tessa—”

  “I don’t want to talk to you,” she said, and hung up. In a moment, she dialed the number again. “There is one thing I need to know. Do I have a sister?”

  “That’s a hard question to answer, honestly,” he said. “Kind of.”

  “Dad. No bullshit. What does that mean?”

  “We need to talk about it when you’re not mad.”

  “That’s gonna be a while.” Tessa closed her eyes and hung up the phone. Since there wasn’t anything else to do, she fired up the computer, using a wireless network card.

  There was an email from her boss.

  To: Tessa.Harlow@ramblingtours.com

  From: Mick.Harrison@ramblingtours.com

  Subject: Re: Los Ladrones tour possibilities

  Hi, Tessa. I’ve gone through the material you’ve gathered, and I’m sorry to say it’s just not doing anything for me. I can see you’re excited about it, and I’d really like to get you back to work, but this doesn’t seem like the right project for our demographic—a little too sedate, maybe. I’m afraid the people who would find this appealing are the explorer women in mid- to late-middle age, and while there’s nothing wrong with that, we’re not currently marketing our tours toward them.

  If you want to think about ways to liven it up, get some more-vigorous hiking in, some kayaking or white-water rafting, that would be great, but this is too tame.

  Give me a call if you want to brainstorm.

  Mick

  Of course. With a tsk of enormous irritation, Tessa pressed the power button and shut the computer down.

  NINETEEN

  Natalie had never felt prettier than she did the first day of third grade. She wore her peasant blouse with a pair of jeans and sandals, so she felt like a person from another land—Morocco, which was a place in a book she read, or Greece, which they had a picture of in her old classroom. Grandma gave her some new stuff to put on her hair so it was all smooth for once. And maybe school stunk, but a person had to go. Maybe they would learn fractions, which she would need if she was going to become a chef someday.

  All summer long, Natalie had been dreading the day they returned to school. She hated this school, because of one reason: Billy Smithers. He was a pale boy with pale eyes and pale freckles, and a mean look in his eyes, just like a ferret. He had asthma, so everyone babied him. Sometimes he had terrible fits where he couldn’t breathe at all, which were scary for everyone except Natalie, who fervently and guiltily wished him dead every single day through all of June and July and August.

  All weekend she had said special prayers, and on Monday afterno
on she said the entire rosary to get herself ready. She felt good in her blouse. She told herself she just wasn’t going to even look at Billy.

  But, naturally, his was the first face she saw when she entered her classroom. His hair was shorn and he had a tan from being outside all summer, but he saw her, too, and snorted like a pig, quietly so nobody would hear except Natalie.

  She sat down, ignoring him, but he changed seats so he could sit right behind her, and he leaned forward to say nasty things in her ear. She didn’t even know what all the words were, but they sounded bad. And she knew some of them just fine: “penis,” for example, which he had once taken out and wiggled on her hand when he trapped her by herself in the gym. She wanted to tell on him, had in fact told on him for calling her names, but she couldn’t bring herself to tell anybody that he did that. What would they think of her?

  She pretended she didn’t hear him, and as soon as another seat came open between two other girls, Natalie jumped up and sat down. “Hey,” one of them said. “We’re saving that seat. You can’t sit there.”

  Natalie acted as if she didn’t hear. She bent her head down and pulled out her notebooks and pencils, and just about the time they would have shoved her, the teacher came in and the girls had to turn around. But not before giving Natalie the evil eye.

  Still, she sat up straight in her seat. This year would be different. She just knew it would be.

  The girls had a ritual for the first day of school, which included Judy picking them up from the bus stop and taking them to her house for tea and cookies, so they could tell her all about their day. She gave them dinner, and Vince came to get them when he was finished with work at six. They would then stop by the grocery store, choose some fruit and treats for their lunch boxes, go home and take baths, read a book, and get to bed by eight-thirty.

  Ritual. Judy was big on ritual, and Vince had to admit he found it helped—not only the girls but his own life.

  At the market, he let them take their time picking out the fruit for the week. Jade wanted red grapes. Hannah chose bananas because she always ate bananas and no other fruit, ever. Natalie carefully looked at everything—the pineapples in rows and oranges in pyramids and kiwis and grapefruits—before choosing tangelos. “I do think we should go to the farmers’ market more often,” she said primly, giving him the bag.

  “We can try, kiddo. Sometimes I have to work Saturdays.”

  “Not always, though.” She flipped hair out of her face, and he noticed that there were blue rings beneath her eyes.

  Tenderly, Vince nudged her shoulder. “Come on, let’s finish up and get you guys home. I want to hear all about the first day.”

  He pushed the cart through the store, remembering he needed eggs and soup. Natalie brought over some whole grain pasta she’d seen on some show or another, and he shook his head. “I don’t know what to do with that.”

  She sighed and took it back. Jade asked for Cocoa Krispies and he rolled his eyes. “No way.” Hannah sat in the carrier and sucked her thumb, looking like a zombie.

  And around the corner came Tessa, carrying a red basket that had some fruit and milk and eggs in it. She wore shorts and flip-flops and a flowered athletic tank that clung to her flat belly and barely restrained breasts, and within three seconds he had her stripped naked in his imagination. She caught him looking at her, and for a moment she looked absolutely bewildered.

  “Hey,” he said. “Looks like you’re laying in supplies.”

  She looked at the basket and to the shelves. “Yeah.”

  “You okay?”

  “Um.” She smoothed a hand through her hair, pulling the waves away from her face, as if she felt guilty. “Not really, but I can’t go into it right now?”

  “Okay.” Very weird vibe coming from her. She still hadn’t met his eyes. And surrounded as he was by his girls, he couldn’t very well ask straight out what was going on. “I see,” he said. “Well, you know my number. Give me a call if you want.”

  Only then did she look up, and her eyes were startlingly bright in the fluorescent light. He glimpsed her misery. Thought he saw conflict when she looked at his mouth, his throat. “Thanks,” she said oddly. “Ditto. Or email if you want. It’s on my card. I’m staying for a little while. Maybe a month. I rented a place.”

  Relief wafted through him. He nodded. “Good.”

  “I’m tired!” Jade said, leaning hard on his leg.

  “Okay, honey,” he said. “We’re leaving.” He lifted his chin toward Tessa and pushed the cart down the aisle away from her, willing himself to pay attention to what really mattered. His daughters. The sane, clean, simple life he could build for them. “Where’s Natalie?” he growled, and she came up beside him.

  “I’m here.”

  “Let’s get out of here, girls. You need bubble baths, right?”

  “Yay!”

  He nosed the cart into line behind a stout old man and gent ly tugged Hannah’s thumb out of her mouth. “Not good for your teeth.” She pulled it back, her eyes glittering, and when he tugged it out again, it made a big pop that made her laugh. He laughed, too, and kissed her head. “You’re so silly.”

  She stuck it back in her mouth, playing, and Vince was about to pull it out again when a man came up behind him. “Sir,” he said. “I need a word with you. Will you come with me?”

  “What?”

  The man wore brown slacks and a short-sleeved dress shirt, and his store name tag said Tim Bok, Store Manager. His thinning brown hair and slim brown mustache made him look like a refugee from 1982. “I need you to follow me into the back. Bring your children.”

  “Uh, I’ve got to get home and get them to bed. Can you tell me what this is about?”

  “I’d rather not do it right here, sir.”

  Irritated, perplexed, Vince turned the cart. “Come on, guys. It won’t take long.”

  The man marched through the baking aisle, his head up like a drum major.

  Jade whined, “I want to go home!”

  In the baby carrier, Hannah sucked her thumb and rubbed her fingers on the hem of her shirt.

  “Daddy?” Natalie said.

  “Not right now, honey.”

  The manager pushed open a pair of gray swinging doors with portholes and led them into the stockrooms beyond.

  “Daddy, I think—”

  “Natalie, please. It will wait.”

  The manager turned around. “Now,” he said, hands on his hips, staring at Natalie, “young lady, would you like to tell us anything?”

  Vince frowned. “What …?”

  Natalie bent her head and opened her backpack, which she’d been wearing slung over one shoulder. She pulled out a hexagonal jar of jam or honey or something. It had a black label. She flashed her dad one single, pointed glance, a glance that managed to be both accusatory and guilty, then she handed the jar over to the manager.

  “Well, what do you have to say for yourself?” the manager asked. “You can’t just steal things, young lady.”

  “Sorry,” Natalie said, but she wasn’t. She was furious, shoulders rigid, chin tilted at that arrogant angle.

  “Natalie!” Jade said in a sharp whisper. She grabbed her sister’s arm. “Why did you do that?”

  Nat shook her off. “Because.” She didn’t look at any of them, only off in the distance.

  Vince frowned and gripped Natalie’s shoulder. Not hard, but enough to get her attention. When she looked up, he gave her his sternest look. “You don’t sound sorry,” he said.

  And finally she looked as if she might cry, as if the situation was sinking in. “I am.” She turned to the manager and said, “I’m really, really sorry, sir. I know it was wrong.”

  He said, “I will let you go this time, but next time you will be in serious trouble, do you understand me?”

  “Yes.”

  Vince felt nine hundred million years old. He could hear the buzz of a fluorescent light high above and the faraway flush of a toilet. A cold breeze blew over his a
nkles. A clock on the wall pointed to 7:45. “Thank you,” he said. “I need to get these girls home, if that’s okay. They have school tomorrow.”

  The manager nodded, lips pressed severely together. Vince knew he was being unfair, but, really, it was an eight-year-old girl and a jar of honey, not a seventeen-year-old with a stolen car.

  But one, he supposed, led to the other. As they headed back down the aisle, Vince said, “Why didn’t you ask for honey?”

  “Lemon curd,” Natalie said. “It was lemon curd.”

  “Why didn’t you ask for lemon curd, then?”

  She shrugged.

  “You know you’re in trouble.”

  She nodded, chewing the inside of her cheek.

  “Let’s just get home right now.”

  Natalie didn’t trust herself to say a single word on the way home. She didn’t feel bad, actually. It was more like she’d drunk bubbles and they were rising up through her chest, into her head, making her dizzy.

  In her imagination, she could see the jar. Beautiful lemon curd, which she knew was made in England. You put it on cakes or things like that, and it looked so elegant in its jar with many sides, with a black label. She wanted it. It was so easy, to pick it up and pretend that she was looking at it, that she was going to carry it down to her dad. Then she put it in her backpack. She didn’t think anybody saw her.

  When they got in the kitchen, their dad went upstairs with Hannah, who was asleep, and told Natalie and Jade to stay there and he’d get them a yogurt before bed.

  Jade gave Natalie the devil look, with her eyes all narrow and slitty, like a snake, her mouth squeezed up so the edges turned white.

  Natalie slammed her pack on the table and glared at her. “What?”

  “You know what! You’re a thief! I can’t believe you did that! What if somebody from our school saw?”

  “I don’t care.”

  Jade shoved her. “Just because you’re a big oinker and nobody likes you doesn’t mean the rest of us don’t have friends!”

  “Don’t call me that!” The stuff that had been building up in her belly all day suddenly exploded. She shoved Jade, hard, and felt happy when she fell on the floor. “Mind your own business.”